Creativity Matters On Mobile Too

Last week I wrote about how the data revolution in television was swinging the other way and brands were starting to realize what a major factor the quality and style of their ads plays in the overall equation. This week I’m looking how that’s playing out on the mobile side, an area that’s long been considered a creative wasteland.

At many agencies, the digital and (especially) the mobile product is an afterthought to TV, frequently shoehorned in as what my colleague, Digiday’s Brian Morrissey once called “matching luggage”—a still or gif from the TV spot whose purpose isn’t to build a brand, but rather to just be a placeholder in case someone is interested enough to click.

Padsquad founder and CEO Daniel Meehan didn’t think that made sense and set out to prove it. “There was such a strong sense of negativity back then from people at traditional agencies,” he recalls. “It was like they couldn’t wrap their heads around the notion that mobile advertising could be creative.”

Fortunately for Meehan, plenty of clients could, and his business took off. In an industry where many of his competitors tout their ability to get users to click on banner ads, Padsquad developed a reputation for doing stellar creative, the sorts of ads that actually help to build brands.

Meanwhile back in the television industry, a revolution of sorts was brewing. Viewing habits were changing as time shifting and binge viewing took off. Networks decided that original programming was the way in which they could stand out, and, as subscription OTT services took off, they also saw original programming as a way to obtain and retain subscribers.

That sounds like a cunning plan, but promoting all those new shows has proven to be problematic.

For years, network promo teams could count on the fact that viewers would come home and turn the TV on for three or four hours every night, during which time they could pump out ads for their new programs, sandwiching tune-in ads in the slots between ads for Toyotas and tuna fish.

That’s simply not feasible anymore in this age of “purposeful viewing” when viewers turn on the TV to watch a specific show and turn it off once the show is over (or, more accurately, once they’ve watched four episodes of it and their eyes are glazing over from lack of sleep.)

New viewing habits call for new promotion techniques. It no longer enough for networks to rely on on-air promos. They need to turn to digital and algorithms.

Algorithms come into play on their networks own home pages when viewers come to figure out what to watch. By tracking viewing habits, they’re able to show viewers programs they’re most likely to watch and when they’re positioned as “recommendations” or just lists of quirky genres (e.g., “Dark-Haired Women in Dark Comedies”) the viewer doesn’t even realize that the lists are being tweaked by an algorithm.

Unfortunately, viewers are spending less time with home pages though, as “purposeful viewing” also means that users now go to the site, watch the show they’re looking for and leave. Plus they’re getting there in other ways too, e.g., “Alexa, show me ‘Stranger Things.’”

Mobile ads have the advantage of being easy to target—everything is addressable and networks can use data they have about their fans to better target their promotions.

That’s where Padsquad comes in. (You knew I’d get back to them eventually.)

Padsquad is getting called on to create ads for TV networks to help them promote their shows. “I think that being creative people themselves, they realize the value of creative ads,” Meehan notes.

Meehan says that networks traditionally have two different game plans when it comes to promotions. “For new series, they’re looking at a longer promotion, generally a few weeks. For existing series, when they just want to remind people that it’s back on, the window is very short, maybe a week or two. That makes it more of a challenge to do something that both pushes branding and drives tune-in.”

Padsquad has proved up to the challenge though, as a recent project for BBC America’s Thursday Night Darts show indicates. The ad they created was an interactive unit that allowed the user to actually play a virtual game of darts. It combined that with an “Add To Calendar” feature and flippable player cards featuring some of the stars of the BBC America show.

The results were pretty spectacular, thus proving the value of creativity: an engagement rate that was 1,650% greater than typical industry benchmarks (that’s not a typo!) and a record-to-VCR rate 100% greater.

“BBC America had several targets in mind,” Meehan recalls.”Their researchers felt that male beer drinkers, tech enthusiasts and comedy fans were going to drive this particular launch. You know, guys who were writing code, drinking beer and watching darts on TV. But in reality, the greatest percentage of people taking the action of adding the show to their calendar on their mobile device, the people watching more of the video too, were sports fans, which we had thought would be a minor category.”

(That of course, seems to answer the other burning question, “is darts actually a sport?” in the affirmative.)

“It’s been really validating to see the results,” Meehan says. “Because not only did we achieve their goals of driving tune-in and getting people to add the show to their calendars, we also, I’d liked to believe, help give some personality to the show, helped make it something people really wanted to see.”

That’s not something that yet another mobile banner ad could achieve and it’s a primary reason why brands need to start looking at creativity on mobile too when planning out their campaigns, tune-in or otherwise. When everyone has the same data, there’s only one thing that sets brands—or new TV shows—apart, and that’s the quality of the creative promoting them.